Grin and bear it: Mum and two cubs chilling in California pool become social media honeys

Family is finally chased off by beagle after dumpster diving.

Two little ones and their mum decided to take a pool break in the middle of a hot California day. Nothing unusual in that, except that they stopped in a pool where they weren't welcome — because they're bears.

It was all captured on helicopter cameras live on local — and eventually a national — TV station after concerned neighbours saw the black bears wandering through backyards in Pasadena and reported them to police.

The videos of the trio's antics became instant hits on social media.

Mum patiently cooled herself in the water while the twin cubs swam and scuffled nearly. At one point the naughtier cub bumped into the home's sliding glass door, shattering it.

Then they stopped for a dumpster snack, which is when a family beagle finally came out to shoo them away.

"It's not unusual at all to see bear activity," Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Los Angeles Times. "But it is unusual to have them in the pool."

But fond of pools they were.

Neighbour Danny Brimecombe spotted one of the bears in his pool and another on a planter earlier in the day and rousted them from his backyard. Soon after, he heard splashing and saw that they were back in his pool.

"I yelled at them, and they were in no hurry to leave," Brimecombe told the Times. "They were not afraid. I got them out of the yard, but they got separated and one was screaming and yelling for the others and I got nervous. I didn't know if the mother was around or if she'd left."

At that point, Brimecombe said, he went back into his house.

The bears eventually moved on, wandering into at least two other backyards and finally finding the perfect pool.

Wildlife workers and sheriff's deputies attempted to herd the bears away from the homes and closer to the open space of the surrounding California hills.

They eventually vanished, "presumably back into the forest", tweeted a local sheriff's department.